


The Family Photo

by GhostWriter2021



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:47:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25924609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostWriter2021/pseuds/GhostWriter2021
Summary: This work is an original stand-alone short story. It has no bearing on any of my other works, and I do not plan to expand on it, but I do hope you enjoy it. Comments are always welcome as long as they remain kind, and if you have a question you wish to ask, I will work on answering it if I can.
Kudos: 1





	The Family Photo

"I cannot live without you, for you are my past," the women declared to the old photograph, a black and white print much stained by travel, time, and handling, crumpled and well worn on the edges with the image still intact. The photograph holds a coffee stain on its upper right corner, spots of grease and dirt along both sides, a brownish stain on the lower-left edge that is suggestive of dried blood, and a splattering of dark water spots on the image itself that seemed to be the ghost of tears.  


Captured in the image is a young family of five. The father stands in the back, to the right of his son, the eldest of his children, dressed in a clean, well-tailored suit. His eyes are sharp and intelligent giving voice to his belief that the solution to every problem in life can be found through the judicious application of logic and reason. His hair is cropped short, barely longer than the standard military cut, and he is clean-shaven. He is tall, appearing to be just over six feet, with a wiry build. His left hand is resting on the boy's right shoulder while his right is in his pocket.  


The mother is beside the father and to the left of her son. She falls a mere four inches short of her husband in stature with the hourglass frame of a supermodel juxtaposed with an MBA fighter's musculature. Her hair is also cropped short but remains just on the edge of femininity. She is dressed in dark slacks paired with a light-colored button-down blouse. Her left hand is on her hip, and her right hand is on her son's left shoulder. Her eyes are dark and observant, seeming to take in everything around her, but in their depths, there is a shadow of grim determination. They said life had not been easy for her, and she had learned to be wary of the world.  


The son stands in the middle of the family with his parents' hands on his shoulders and hands on his sister's shoulders. His hair is dark like his mother's and cropped short in a slightly more grown-out version of his father's hair cut with every hair combed meticulously. He has his mother's eyes, but lacking the shadow of pain and suffering her's hold, they sparkle like gems. Life has yet to take the luster from his gaze. His frame is like his father, tall and lean, but under the suit he wears, a smaller version of his father's, his musculature resembles his mom's full nature. He wears a smile on his face, one that reaches all the way to his gemstone eyes, and reveals to the world his curious and intelligent nature. In the picture, he seems to be no older than twelve, but in his posture, he presents himself as a great explorer. He has not hit his growth spurt yet and stands about eight inches short of his mother. His hands-on his sister's shoulders serve to pull them together and show off his nature as a proud older brother.  


The sisters are identical twins, standing just a few inches below their brother's shoulders. Like their mother, they wear slacks and cute blouses, and though young, appearing to be around nine years old, show signs of inheriting their mother's figure and build. Their smiles are full of mischief and shine with the innate humor of adolescence; to them, life is still but an entertaining game. Their eyes hold the same palpable intelligence as their fathers, but their smiles show that it has yet to be honed in the same way as his through time and experience.  


The only thing that differentiates the two sisters is the way their hair is cut. The sister on the son's right, and therefore in front of her father with her brother's right hand on her right shoulder, has long hair put into a simple braid that falls over her left shoulder. There is a pale flower attached to the ponytail at the end of the twist, a slight nod to her femininity. The sister on the son's left, with his left hand on her left shoulder, has her mother's hair cut with an additional hairpiece with a dark flower on it over her left ear.  


The mother might look a little worn by time and the father a little cold due to his clearly calculatory nature, but overall the photo holds a rather picturesque, happy, and healthy family. A long-time has passed since the picture was taken, and the Woman knows that of all the people the image holds, she is the only one that is still alive. The Woman has become quite agitated and sets the photograph violently down on the coffee table before her, rattling the vase at its center. The vessel holds no flowers, save for those sketched into its sides. The Woman and the picture are all that remains of the family.  


The Woman's anger fades, and tears swim to the surface as she remembers the night that everything changed for them. That night's events hold the source of her greatest regret and the moment that defined her as a person and shaped her life into what it is today. With the tears come overwhelming emotions, and suddenly the repressed memories of that night, once relegated to the back of her mind, begin to resurface.  


Her eyes sting from the sweat dripping down her face and the smoke being produced by the fires that light up the otherwise pitch-black night. Her mouth tastes of ash and dirt with a hint of the iron-rich flavor of blood. Her hands are stained with the mud created by mixing the earth and the copious amount of the crimson liquid that covers the ground. The fires and blood painted the dark night with shades of red, and save for the flames crackling; the night is eerily silent. She is looking for someone, but through the smokey haze, she can't find anyone. The air smells of petrol and fire, but underneath that, there is the smell of death in the form of the noxious fumes produced by burning human flesh. She stumbles to her feet and briefly wonders how she ended up covered in so much blood until she remembers the Man and the knife, and suddenly she is sick. A new smell is added to the night, and her mouth now tastes less of smoke and more of vomit. She had killed a man. No, she had killed more than one Man. How many had died by her young hands that night? She did not know. She did not want to know. Right now, it is unimportant; she just needed to find them.  


The Woman forcefully tried to snap herself back to reality. That night she had ended the life of four men. Yes, it was four. She was sure of it, or at least confident she knew what the police's forensic investigation's results had caused the investigators to believe that she had killed four people. She remembered what the therapist had told her all those years ago and repeated it to herself. It was not my fault. I was only acting in self-defense. If I had done nothing, they would have killed me. They very nearly did kill me, and as it stands, they stole my innocence. It was not working, she was losing the battle, and she slipped back into the seas of memory.  


She stumbles about, searching through the carnage. She can't seem to find the people she is looking for, and everyone she passes appears to be dead. Now that the initial shock has begun to pass, she begins to notice a sharp, knife-like pain in her ribs that flares up whenever she breathes and the burning sensation from the myriad of cuts covering her body. Finally, she comes across another living person sitting on their knees with their head hanging down in defeat. She approaches them carefully. The events of the night have stolen from her the ability to trust people. The person is her sister, covered in dirt, blood, and mud with her clothing in tatters. There are burns on her forearms, and the sleeves of her shirt, what's left of them, are singed. Her hair is no longer tied back in its perfect braid but is coming loose and clotted with her surroundings' filth. Her sister is devastated, from the wounds that cover her body to the anguished expression on her face, and she briefly wonders if she looks the same.  


She gives herself a hard mental slap in the form of a memory of her mother's terse words on the subject of self-defense, "Only the strong have the right to choose not to kill their opponent. There is only kill or be killed for the weak, without the time to consider pulling your punch. When you are weak, hesitation leads to death. Only the strong can be hesitant to kill their opponent and live." She was not strong at the time. She could not hesitate and come out alive, so she had not hesitated: the men who tried to kill her were dead, and she was still alive. She is now strong enough to hesitate and persevere, but it is risky to fight a life-or-death battle without the initial determination to end your opponent's life. That night she had done precisely what she had been taught to do. She had been faced with opponents that wanted to kill her, and she had reacted in self-defense. Her actions had resulted in the death of four men, but she saved her own life. Though her physical wounds have healed, the emotional scars of that night remain.  


She forcibly pushed the memory away from herself. She drives away the image of her sister holding her brother's head in her lap with exquisite care. She pushed away the image of the burns that scarred his face and body. She drives it all away from her with as much mental force as she can muster. Even the memory falling to her knees next to her sister. Acknowledging that the charred corpse in her small arms is what remains of her brother, is ruthlessly pushed away into the dark chasm of her mind from which it came.  


Their mother had come to there rescue that night, I'll be it a little late, on a wave of sirens that had washed over and drown out the eerie silence in her full body armor with the letters FBI stenciled on the front. She had been efficient in clearing the area and Finding her children. When she found them, she never left their side calling in EMT's and managing the operation from her position next to them.  


She immediately took note of their condition, from her son's dead body to the indication of the violence the twins had gone through and the anguish in their eyes. She knows those eyes. They are the same eyes that stare back at her when she looks in the mirror, and they tell her that they have ended the life of another. Most of the information went into a box in her well-organized mind labeled latter. She could not process the death of her son or the end of her daughters' innocence currently. It would cause her to much stress, and it would not be helpful for them at that moment, so she labeled it latter and addressed only information that was productive at the moment. Only the information that was pertinent to tracking down the bastards who did this to her children and the inventory of the damage done to them was relevant at that moment, so that is what she chose to focus on. The other things, like the cold dead body of her son, could wait for later.  


The Woman's father had been an analyst for the Pentagon and successfully tracked down the men that had organized the attack on his children in only three months. He rooted out the sources of corruption to the money launderer who help fund it and the criminal organization that had provided the muscle, and what did he get for his troubles? A bullet to the head. The mother still reeling from her son's death went on a full-fledged manhunt using the information her husband had dredged up and that her opponents thought they had eliminated. It took her two and a half years, but she found the evidence, and every last person who had hurt her family ended up behind bars for a long time.  


One may ask what really happened that night? The answer is simple. Their parents had made one too many enemies, and knowing they couldn't take down the parents, they went after their children and kidnapped them. They did not expect that the children would be so well trained that they were able to mount an escape, an escape that quickly became a fight for their lives when the men realized that they had lost the battle and their position had been compromised. They had split up to split their enemy's attention, and it had worked for the most part. The men had been forced to split up while pursuing them, but when they caught up to the children, all hell broke loss. The children had used what was available in their surroundings to set traps, including the highly flammable gases, and that's when it becomes unclear. The women had ended up dealing with four of the men on her own, the explosion having taken care of their guns, and leaving them sufficiently stunned, she took out two of them almost instantly. The other two were the source of her numerous injuries. Moments from that battle occasionally appear in her dreams, but as long as she is awake, the ordeal remains a blur.  


After that night, their parents hid them. They got them false identities, exceptional therapists, great trainers, and spots in the witness protection program. When their father died, their mother sent them out of the country to a boarding school in England and had their Aunt look after them and helo them refine their skills, combat, and otherwise. Their mother visited them occasionally, but for the most part, she was on the warpath against those who had hurt the ones she loved, and she only took a break when she was forced to do so.  


The family had grown apart; the mother had forgotten how to feel and walled herself off from the emotion called love. The children had lost the ability to trust and had become hard. They stopped acting like curious and nieve children and instead went thru life acting like battle-hardened soldiers. They matured to be ruthless in their logic and used their sharp intellect like a blade. They studied humanity as if they were no longer a part of it, and by the time they were thirteen, they could read people about as well as a professional interrogator. They divorced themselves from emotion to the point that those who had managed to work their way into friendships with them jokingly called them Vulcans, and they were right in a way. To them, emotions had become a part of the human equation, and things like love where just functions over infinite dimensions, and as long as they chose to remain in the null space of those functions they could be free of the pesky emotions that had cut like knives into their soul. This concerned the therapist they talked to on a regular base. The therapist classified it as complete emotional detachment as a result of a traumatic event, but aside from their lack of emotions and the near inability to trust the twins wherein almost perfect mental health, a miracle considering what they had gone thru.  


They grew up to be like their mother, easily one of the most dangerous people on the planet. The Woman went into the military special forces and eventually climbed the Department of Defense's ranks, becoming one of their best special ops commander in the department's history. Her sister joined the CIA and retired as their top analyst. Her mother took over the FBI like a raging storm, rooting out corruption and generally making herself a shady politician's worst nightmare. They had survived. They had done many great things, and together saved many lives, but now that both her mother and sister are dead and gone and she is left in a too-big house all alone she can't help but wonder if the had failed to live and her thoughts return to the Mans offer and the old photo.  


The Man always came back. Not with any regularity, but offten enough, it hardly mattered. It matters not what she tells him, he always returns, and the offer remained the same. The Woman used to wonder why he came in the first place and why he always comes back, but it hardly matters now. She is dying, yet the offer remains the same. _'If you could go back and change it all, would you? I can return you to the girl you were in that photo and leave the memories. You could change everything. Don't you want to change what happened, to make it all better? I can help you. All you need do is say yes,' _but her reply is always no. However, the closer she gets to death, the more tempting the offer becomes. Why must she die alone or live in this too-large house for its single occupant and remain in its too quiet rooms when she could go back to the time they were filled with family and love. She is afraid that when the Man ultimately returns, she may no longer have the strength to deny him.  
__

__The ring of the doorbell jars her from her troubling thoughts. She hopes it is not the Man. She fears it is, and her strength will fail.  
_ _

__The Woman rises to open the door. There is little use in ignoring it, and nothing much left for her to do, save for answering when someone comes calling. It could be one of her many students or an old coworker wishing to consult. It could also be the Man. She is quite old now and has been for some time now considering how quickly she is closing in on her first century, but her age does little to slow her movements. She always strives to remain in peak physical shape, and even now, her efforts have her looking decades younger then her birth certificate would suggest.  
_ _

__When she opens the door, she does not find the Man on the other side, nor is she presented with a former student or colleague's face. Instead, what she finds on her doorstep is a young girl in a girl scout uniform selling cookies as her father watches her from his position on the sidewalk. He looks amused by her antics, and the face she looks down into when the child speaks is so full of innocence it hurts. She hardly remembers the last time she was confronted with this much innocence and warmth, and perhaps it is for that reason that she bye a box of thin mints if nothing else. She watches as the child moves to the next house before closing the door, but the small smile trying to stretch her face hurts.  
_ _

__She is dying, and she can feel it. It will not be long now. The Man will come again and soon. She knows this with absolute certainty even as she returns to her seat and opens the box to munch on her new cockies, but the Woman knows what she will tell him now. When he comes, she will tell him the truth. I can no more change my past then destroy the person I am today. I will never accept your offer, for it requires me to kill the person I am now. She smiles again, a mear quirk of the lips, and it hurts a little less this time. The Man can come as many times as he wants, her answer will not change._ _


End file.
